Last year’s Mets were a bit of a mess. After entering the season as a projected powerhouse, things fell apart quickly. They jettisoned their two highest-paid pitchers at the deadline for prospects and finished with a lackluster 75 wins. There were multiple reasons for such a disappointing season — their bats stalled and only one starting pitcher reached 130 innings — but perhaps no loss was more devastating than that of closer Edwin Díaz. Before the season, his injury dropped the Mets from second to 19th in projected bullpen WAR; they ended up 29th.

The Mets knew that Díaz would be back in 2024, but they still entered the offseason needing to improve a bullpen that way too often turned to the likes of Trevor Gott, Tommy Hunter, and Jeff Brigham. And in a wave of recent moves, they’ve done just that, signing Adam Ottavino, Jake Diekman, and Shintaro Fujinami to one-year deals. Read the rest of this entry »

The Kansas City Royals committed to the largest contract in franchise history on Monday, signing shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. to an 11-year extension worth $288.8 million. In addition to the guarantee, which runs through the 2034 season, there’s a three-year club option worth $89 million that would bring the total value of the deal to $377 million if exercised. Witt gets some options of his own, with four opt-out opportunities from 2030 to 2033 (the seventh, eighth, ninth, and 10th seasons of the deal). The 23-year-old Witt had a breakout 2023 season, hitting .276/.319/.495 with 30 homers and 49 stolen bases, good for 5.7 WAR, a mark that ranked third among shortstops behind only Corey Seager and Francisco Lindor.

Suffice it to say, I was floored when news of this deal hit Monday afternoon. Money may not go as far as it used to, but a nearly $300 million commitment is still a pretty large one, with fewer than 20 contracts in league history exceeding $250 million in guaranteed cash. A contract this big would still be a massive story in New York or Los Angeles; in the context of Kansas City baseball, the discovery of extraterrestrial life would probably get booted from the front page in favor of this deal. To say the Royals don’t typically enter into pacts like this would be an epic understatement. We’re talking about a franchise that had never given out even a $100 million contract, with the largest previous deal being Salvador Perez’s 2021 extension that guaranteed him $82 million over four years. Triple the size of Perez’s bag of cash and you still have enough left over to make a stack of hundred dollar bills about 140 feet high.

The Royals picked the right player to play Rich Uncle Pennybags with. Witt is the team’s best young player since Carlos Beltrán about 20 years ago. Back then, the Royals valued him so highly that after agreeing in principle to a three-year, $25 million contract, ownership decided to blow up the deal by trying to pull back a million dollars. A year later, Beltrán was traded in a three-way swap that netted the organization Mark Teahen, Mike Wood, and John Buck, who combined for about seven total WAR as Royals. Two decades later, Beltrán has a good shot at making the Hall of Fame — the biggest obstacle is his involvement in Houston’s trashcananigans — and if he gets a plaque, it may be with NY on the cap, not KC.

Witt isn’t some stathead favorite who snuck in a great season on the back of a spike in walks and crazy one-year defensive numbers (though we’ll get to his defense in a minute) — he was one of the top amateurs in the country, and as a pro prospect, he was one of those rare players who the scouts, the numbers crowd, and the computers all relished. He so electrified the atmosphere in spring training in 2021 that the Royals might have given serious thought to having him basically skip the whole upper minors.

While the Royals were probably right to develop Witt traditionally, assigning him to Double-A in 2021, they cleared the decks to get him a full-time spot in the lineup for 2022. Adalberto Mondesi’s presence resulted in Witt starting off at third base, but Mondesi’s ACL tear opened up the shortstop job, which Witt has mostly held since. A .254/.294/.428 line in his rookie campaign wasn’t phenom material, but as a 22-year-old shortstop, it was still enough to place him around average at the position, with a whole lot of unexplored ceiling remaining. Let’s crank up the time machine and jump back to his long-term ZiPS projections before last season:

Assuming the reduced salary figures for his pre-free agency years, ZiPS would have offered 11 years and $282 million to cover Witt through the 2034 season, though without the opt-out years, which do add significant value for most players. And remember, that projection isn’t what the computer suggests knowing how last season went — this is before 2023.

While this projection did a decent job of pegging Witt’s 2023 offense (with a projected OPS+ of 114 vs. an actual OPS+ of 120 and a wRC+ of 115), the computer didn’t see his defensive improvements coming. Originally, it was up for debate whether Witt’s future in the majors would be at shortstop or third base; the Royals originally starting Mondesi at short over Witt wasn’t necessarily some bit of undue veteran deference. Per Statcast’s RAA, Witt improved by 17 runs at shortstop from 2022 to 2023, ranking as the top defensive shortstop in the American League last season. Even Sports Info Solutions’ Defensive Runs Saved, a relative skeptic on Witt, saw a 12-run improvement.

Defense is notoriously hard to measure, but Witt’s numbers improved both in terms of range and avoiding errors. The latter is a relatively small part of defense, but it’s also one that’s much easier to measure, and Witt netted six runs of his improvement just from avoiding errors, going from six non-throwing errors to only two in 2023 despite 50% more innings. Last August, Jake Mintz went into detail on Witt’s defensive instruction at shortstop:

For a crash course in rewiring his defensive approach, Witt’s personal hitting coach Jeremy Isenhower invited well-known private infield coach Nate Trosky out to his hitting facility in Tomball, Texas, for two days of intensive training with the young shortstop. In the nippy mid-December chill, Trosky, an eccentric, fast talking, sun-hat wearing, country-song singing, infield mental skills expert, ran Witt through nearly six straight hours of instruction.
[…]
A close review of Witt’s 2022 errors confirms this hypothesis. Most of his fielding mistakes appeared to stem from a hesitant first step that led to issues with Witt’s timing and rhythm toward the ball. But if Trosky made things incredibly complicated on purpose, Royals first-year infield coach José Alguacil has taken an opposite yet complementary approach.

Let’s spin up the computer one more time and get Witt’s current projection, through the team option years:

How good is this projection? ZiPS would happily throw another $100 million Witt’s way, meaning the Royals still have a lot of room for this deal to be absolutely fabulous from their point of view. Note that ZiPS isn’t even assuming Witt is a +10 defensive shortstop; 2023 was only enough for it to believe that he’s league average. If I tell ZiPS to assume he’s a -10 shortstop with the glove right now, it still thinks $240 million would be a fair deal. In other words, liking this contract from Kansas City’s perspective does not require you to abandon all skepticism about his defense.

Outside of the bottom line figure, it’s encouraging to see the Royals invest in a young star to this degree. It’s hard to remember now, but at one point, the Royals were one of baseball’s model franchises. Founded with the late Ewing Kauffman as the owner, the Royals managed to pass the .500 mark in just their third year of existence, and following their breakout 1975, they were one of the top teams in baseball for 15 years, a whole generation of baseball:

Kauffman mostly kept Kansas City’s stars together and put the team’s cash back into the roster. From 1985 to 1994, the Royals were only out of the top 10 in payroll once, in 1992, and even led the league in 1990. But Kauffman passed away in 1993 and so did the team’s Golden Era. Outside of the Royals’ brief period of relevance in the mid-2010s, they spent so much time in the basement that someone should have checked them for a Vitamin D deficiency. The team’s success in 2014-2015 energized the locals for the first time in decades, but the organization showed little inclination to actually try and keep those fans, and as the team’s core aged and/or moved on, so did the KC faithful. Paid attendance in the championship 2015 season was over 33,000 per game. The Royals haven’t even done half that since 2019.

Does signing Bobby Witt Jr. bring back the Royals as a dynasty? Of course not — the team has still more holes than Clyde Barrow’s 1934 Ford DeLuxe Fordor. But Witt’s signing is a callback to a happier time, when Royal blue held more than just temporary apparel for superstars. Whether or not the Royals solve their other problems, for the next decade, shortstop probably won’t be one of them.

You’ve seen this movie a million times. The Rays make some innocuous transaction, adding a reliever you’ve heard of but perhaps forgotten about in trade or free agency. You remember that guy – but now? Him? Surely they can’t be serious. But of course, they are serious, and it ends up working out better than anyone expected, and next thing you know that guy is getting key outs against great hitters.

You might think the team’s most recent reliever transaction fits both parts of this trope: an obscure(ish) pitcher who will no doubt become good. But you’d only be half right about Phil Maton, who has reportedly agreed to a one-year deal for $6.5 million, with a $7.5 million team option for 2025, per Mark Feinsand and Robert Murray. A physical is still pending, and the contract isn’t expected to become official until next week, per Marc Topkin. Will Maton lock down key innings for Tampa Bay this year? I’d bet on it. But where you’d go wrong is in thinking that Maton came to the Rays to get better. While you weren’t looking, he’s already become a great reliever, and the Rays are in fact engaging in another of their favorite offseason pastimes: seeing a great performance before the rest of the league and capitalizing.

I can hear your skepticism, and that’s perfectly okay. Phil Maton is a great reliever? How come our Depth Charts project him for a 4.10 ERA next year? How come his best season produced a 3.00 ERA and peripherals on either side of four? How come he signed this deal in February? Am I thinking, perhaps, of a different Phil Maton? Read the rest of this entry »

With the news that Byron Buxton is eyeing up a return to center field, the Minnesota Twins have quite a bit of flexibility at the heavy end of the defensive spectrum. When they need some thump and don’t care much about the defensive consequences, the Twins can choose from a variety of designated hitters, left fielders, and first basemen: Matt Wallner, Alex Kirilloff, Trevor Larnach, and most recently Carlos Santana.

Santana, who will turn 38 just after Opening Day, has been around so long he’s the only reason anyone remembers Casey Blake. By now, you know what he’ll provide: Lots of walks, a little power, and decent defense at first base. Santana’s last season of 2.0 WAR or more was 2019, and after spending 10 of his first 11 seasons in Cleveland, he’s bounced around quite a bit; this is his fifth team since the start of the 2022 season. Read the rest of this entry »

The White Sox rebuild marched on over the weekend, as the team signed a veteran non-roster invitee and made two trades that brought three prospects and a draft pick into the system. Most significantly, 24-year-old reliever Gregory Santos was traded to the Mariners for 23-year-old righty Prelander Berroa, 25-year-old outfielder Zach DeLoach and a “Comp B” draft pick, the 69th choice in the 2024 draft. The White Sox also traded 21-year-old righty Cristian Mena to Arizona for 26-year-old outfielder Dominic Fletcher. Read the rest of this entry »

The Oakland-for-now Athletics had themselves a roster shuffle on Friday, bolstering their pitching staff by adding right-hander Ross Stripling and officially announcing the addition of lefty Alex Wood. Wood joined the A’s on a one-year contract worth $8.5 million (with another million’s worth of incentives) after three years with the Giants. Now Stripling, too, is headed east across the bay, in a deal sending minor league outfielder Jonah Cox west to San Francisco (To make room for the pair, Oakland outrighted lefty Francisco Pérez and designated infielder Jonah Bride for assignment).

Wood and Stripling, who might have said something like “It’s not goodbye; it’s see you later” while packing up their lockers after the 2023 season, will be teammates for the fourth separate stint on three different California teams. They spent from 2016 to 2018 together on the Dodgers before Wood was dealt to the Reds, were reunited back in Los Angeles for the start of the pandemic-shortened 2020 season until Stripling was traded to Toronto, and then signed nearly identical two-year, $25 million free agent contracts with San Francisco a year apart from one another. Now, they’ll pair up again in Oakland and figure to factor into a starting rotation that was worth a league-worst combined 1.8 WAR in last season.

Both pitchers were available at a modest cost to the A’s after floundering in their only year together with the Giants. As Kyle Kishimoto wrote last week, Wood struggled to get hitters to swing at bad pitches and to miss whenever they did swing, falling to the 13th percentile in chase percentage and the 17th in whiff percentage. As a result, he struck out a lot fewer hitters and walked a whole bunch more. He also failed to stay healthy, with strains in his left hamstring and lower back sidelining him for the bulk of two months, and by late July, he was relegated to bullpen work as a sort of piggybacker and long relief option. He pitched better in this role, but it was far from what he and the Giants had hoped for when he signed his deal before the 2022 season. Still, Wood brings 10 years of big league service and a not-too-shabby 18.1 career WAR to Oakland, where he’ll try to right the ship. Read the rest of this entry »

David Bednar was an unproven San Diego Padres pitcher when he was first featured here at FanGraphs in March 2020. The burly right-hander had made just 13 big-league appearances, all in the previous season when he’d allowed eight runs in 11 innings of undistinguished work. A 35th-round draft pick four years prior, he’d been lightly regarded as a prospect.

Fast forwarding to today, Bednar is one of the most dominant closers in the game. Now pitching for his hometown Pittsburgh Pirates, the hard-throwing hurler is coming off of an All-Star season where he logged 39 saves, a 2.00 ERA, and a 2.53 FIP. Since being acquired in a three-deal in January 2021, he boasts a 2.25 ERA and a 2.56 FIP, as well as a hefty 31.2% strikeout rate.

How has the 6-foot-1, 250-pound reliever evolved since we first spoke? I asked him that question when the Bucs visited Wrigley Field in late September.

“I’m able to command all three of my pitches in the zone better,” said Bednar. “I also have a better idea of where my misses are. Another big thing is having the confidence to trust my stuff in the zone. I know it sounds redundant, but I’m just competing in the zone. When I attack guys and keep all of my lanes the same, good things happen.”

Bednar feels that his raw stuff is much the same as what it was before his breakthrough. Along with the aforementioned strides, how he sequences has gone a long way toward his success. A former teammate played a big role. Read the rest of this entry »

In a more just world — in a world without injury — Byron Buxton would need a lot more shelf space in his home. A five-tool player with a name that sounds like it should belong to a superhero, Buxton was drafted second overall in 2012, spent some time as our number one prospect, debuted at age 21, and went on to average nearly 4.6 WAR per 162 games. By all rights, he should have spent his 20s challenging Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani to a game of hot potato with the American League MVP trophy. He should be on magazine covers. He should be a worldwide megastar nicknamed Lord Byron.

Instead, Buxton is a one-time All-Star who owns a Gold Glove, a Platinum Glove, and a Wilson Overall Defensive Player of the Year, all three awarded in 2017. He’s never finished better than 16th in the MVP race. You know the reason for this as well as I do. Buxton has never put up 4.6 WAR in a season because he’s never come close to playing in 162 games in one. He’s surpassed 92 games just once and he’s qualified for the batting title just once: in 2017, the year of the glove-shaped trophies. Over the nine seasons of his career, Buxton has played in roughly 4.5 seasons worth of games. The injury section of his Baseball Prospectus player page borders on some sort of macabre literary pretension, listing a blazon of injuries to his head, face, shoulder, back, ribs, wrist, hand, thumb, finger, hip, groin, hamstring, knee, shin, foot, and toe. There are fractures, hairline fractures, concussions, contusions, lacerations, dislocations, strains, sprains, soreness, inflammation, and tendinitis.

This morose lede is just a preamble though, because Buxton is back. Earlier this week at TwinsFest, he told everyone just that: “Oh yeah. I’m back.” After undergoing offseason surgery to excise a plica from his right knee, he is ready to play center field for the first time since 2022. “What makes me so sure? My body tells me that,” Buxton said. This is wonderful news. Anyone who loves baseball is rooting for him to get a shot at a full, fully healthy season. Anyone who loves baseball is excited to watch him roam center field once again, a human being so perfectly suited to that environment and the task before him that you can’t help but feel for just a moment like maybe the whole world makes sense after all.

Anyone who loves baseball is also tempering their expectations. Buxton is 30 and coming off a second straight season that ended with knee surgery. His offseason routine right now is equal parts physical therapy and baseball activities. The Twins have been honest about the fact that “back” might not mean exactly what we might want it to mean. They’re hoping that Buxton will be able to play 80 games in center field. For his part, Buxton chose not to put a number on it. “My body will tell me that,” he said.

Bodies are the worst. What the hell are you supposed to do with your hands? The same body that gives you the coordination and grace to play the game in such a way that it transcends the realm of sport and becomes art can then decide to break down frequently — so frequently that the fleeting chance to perform on that plane of existence serves as nothing more than a wistful reminder of what could have been.

How much health is a person entitled to? Everyone on earth has had their life limited to some degree by their health, and everyone knows people who have had it much worse. Injuries are a part of sports and a part of life. No one deserves to be injured, or to feel sick. In a more merciful world, we would all live healthy lives, achieving our potential (or not achieving it for all the other reasons that we don’t achieve our potential), and then one day the grim reaper would give us a friendly tap on the pristine shoulder and ask us to follow him, please.

It gets weirder when you’re a talent like Buxton. It’s his life, and he must be acutely aware of how differently things could have gone, of how much more he had to offer over the last nine years. But the rest of the baseball world feels robbed too, both on his behalf and on our own. We want to see his greatness for ourselves and for baseball as a whole.

How much health is a ballplayer entitled to? With the exception of Cal Ripken Jr., every baseball player alive could argue that they would have had a lot more to offer the game if only their body would have cooperated.

Buxton, though, is a different, more extreme case. Keep in mind that his 19.0 WAR during his nine major league seasons rank 60th among all position players. Keep in mind that every single one of the 59 players ahead of him has played in more games than his 670 in that span. (Ronald Acuña Jr. has the next fewest games played in the group, at 673, but he debuted three years after Buxton and has recorded 545 more plate appearances.) Keep in mind that 39 of those 59 players have made at least 1,000 more plate appearances than Buxton’s 2,487. Keep in mind that even when he has been on the field, Buxton hasn’t been at 100% all that often. Keep in mind that despite that fact, on a per-game basis, Buxton has been more valuable than 31 of those 59 players.

In 2023, battling through a rib injury, patella tendinitis, and a hamstring strain that combined to limit him to 85 games, Buxton ran a 98 wRC+. It was his worst offensive performance since 2018, when he played in just 28 games. Buxton was more aggressive on pitches in the zone and he made more contact, but that didn’t stop his strikeout rate from rising by a percentage point. His average exit velocity fell last year, and his EV50 (the average of the top 50% of his hardest hit balls, which Baseball Savant formerly referred to as best speed) has dropped in each of the past three seasons, from 104.7 mph to 103.8 to 102.5.

Even so, there were positive signs last season, too. His sprint speed was still a nearly elite 29.3 mph. He was still worth 4.8 runs on the bases, tied for 29th best in baseball among players with at least 300 plate appearances and his highest total since 2017. Although his power was down overall, Buxton was still capable of top-end exit velocity. He ripped three of the four hardest-hit balls of his career in 2023. That includes a career-high 116.9 mph double on Aug. 1, his last regular season game of the season.

Buxton has also made it clear that he’ll be more comfortable when he’s playing on both sides of the ball again. “I’m 29, I’m DHing, and I know I’m not supposed to be DHing,” Buxton said at TwinsFest. “You’re not buying into DH.” There’s bias in these numbers, because Buxton was usually relegated to DH when he wasn’t healthy enough to play the field, but since 2019, he has a 111 wRC+ as a DH and a 136 wRC+ as a center fielder. “What excites me? I’m going back to center,” he said. “As simple as that. Nothing makes me happier than playing the outfield.” He’s not alone. The Twins have been encouraged by videos of Buxton’s progress, seeing him move better than he has in years, watching him get into his legs at the plate and make the thunderous contact that he’s capable of making.

One of the joys of sports is that we get to witness greatness. Somewhere out there, at every human pursuit, someone is the best. If you’re one of the greatest accountants in the world, that gift will probably allow you to carve out a nice life for yourself, maybe even a luxurious one. But your gift will likely go unrecognized to some degree. How exactly do you judge that someone is the best in the world at accountancy? In sports, greatness shows up in the numbers, but it’s often obvious. It knocks you over the head. It’s miraculous to behold. Sometimes you see Shohei Ohtani at the plate, looking completely fooled by a pitch yet still able to reach flick it over fence, and you can’t help but laugh, because no other reaction seems appropriate. Buxton, too, is that type of player when he is on the field.

It would be truly magical to see Buxton at his best, and best health, for a whole season. He certainly deserves the chance. The rest of us will be hoping he gets that chance, too. But at the same time, we should not confuse hope with expectation. The sanguine quotes may have gotten the headlines, but Buxton gave another that summed up the situation a little more completely. “It’s different, I can feel it. It feels good,” he said. “Things feel back to … as close to normal as it’s going to get. You take the positive and run with it.”

Under John Angelos, son of Peter Angelos, who took the team to the verge of the World Series in the 1990s, the Baltimore Orioles have been hamstrung by a lack of investment, uncertainty over potential relocation, and a lawsuit over control of the family fortune that contains allegations straight out of the Book of Genesis. A 100-win team with a once-in-a-generation core of up-the-middle talent has had its wings clipped by an owner whose picture should be on the Wikipedia page for Hanlon’s Razor.

Well, the O’s are finally getting out of purgatory. Angelos has agreed to sell the team to a group fronted by billionaire David Rubenstein. The new owners will reportedly purchase 40% of the team now, with Rubenstein replacing John Angelos as the Orioles’ control person once the sale goes through. His group will then have the option to buy full control at a later date.

Even before the sale is official, the Orioles have solved their no. 1 glaring weakness by acquiring Corbin Burnes for a draft pick and two players they didn’t really need. It’s as if the mere mention of Rubenstein changed the omens around the ballclub. Read the rest of this entry »

Late last night, the Milwaukee Brewers sent Corbin Burnes to the Baltimore Orioles for two 25-year-old players – left-handed pitcher DL Hall and infielder Joey Ortiz – as well as a Competitive Balance Round A pick in the 2024 draft (pick no. 34 overall). Milwaukee’s active roster is worse today without Burnes, who has been one of the best pitchers in baseball since moving into the rotation full-time in 2021. But the player portion of return for one year of Burnes, who is slated to hit free agency after the season, succeeds in threading the small market needle by providing both short- and long-term reinforcement to the big league club, as both players are major league ready and also under club control for the next six seasons. Burnes was unlikely to re-sign with Milwaukee, and the Brewers get a comp pick similar to the one they would have received had they extended him a qualifying offer after the 2024 season, plus two good, young players.

Let’s talk about those players, starting with Ortiz. A fourth rounder in 2019, Ortiz has a career .286/.357/.449 line in the minors and reached the big leagues in 2023. With so many other infielders, chiefly Gunnar Henderson and Jackson Holliday, also in the upper-level mix for playing time, the Orioles had a surplus of players like this in their system. Ortiz was a top 100 prospect last offseason and ended the 2023 season as my 57th overall prospect. His profile was initially rooted in his plus combination of defense and feel for contact, but in 2023, he traded some of that contact for meaningfully more power. Ortiz’s underlying contact quality took a leap across the board, most notably his hard-hit rate, which rose from 31% in 2022 to 46% in 2023. This was coupled with a noticeable shift in his physicality, as Ortiz looked bigger and stronger. Ortiz’s contact rates, both overall and in-zone, dropped a tad compared to 2022 and he’s a bit chase-prone, but his well-rounded offensive output should clear the relatively low bar for middle infielders. Read the rest of this entry »